


Hurry Up and Wait

by rageprufrock



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-04
Updated: 2010-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you mean, "'DiNozzo's out,'" Gibbs snapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurry Up and Wait

Soldiers complained about hurry up and wait, but it afflicted more than the armed forces, and while at least Gibbs had always had something to clean with a toothbrush in the Marines, NCIS left a lot of time for staring at the ceiling tiles and digging through cold cases in the file room. So it really wasn't his fault that he hadn't realized the metropolitan police department had stolen one of his people until two days after it had already happened.

"What do you mean, "'DiNozzo's out,'" Gibbs snapped.

McGee kept mostly hidden behind his computer monitor. "He said he called you."

Gibbs looked at his cell phone: four missed calls, two from DiNozzo, three new voicemails. He snapped it shut and then barked, "Well, he didn't. Where did he say he was going?"

"Something about being farmed out to the DC PD," Kate said, wandering past with her face buried in a forensics journal. "Morrow okayed it, from what DiNozzo said before he left."

"Doesn't anybody remember I'm his boss?" Gibbs growled.

Kate looked up at him and blinked, surprised. "Director Morrow said he sent you an email about it."

While Gibbs couldn't, conclusively anyway, prove that McGee was the one who'd started snickering behind him, he saw no problem with handing the man two decades worth of old cold cases needing to be inputted into the modern database and reveling in the look of utter despair on McGee's face when he realized all the notes were written in longhand.

Gibbs spent the afternoon not sulking and prodding his email, deleting in quick succession all five from Morrow regarding personnel allocation — which Gibbs translated into "I'm prostituting your team. Gird McGee's loins, he may be next" — as some sort of feeble peace gesture after all of the toes Gibbs had spent years stepping on. Gibbs fired back that he wouldn't have trampled on anybody if they'd just get out of his way in the first place, and Morrow had written back, "Which is exactly why I sent DiNozzo and not you."

At five he found Ducky and Abby in the lab discussing the Top Ten Stupidest Undercover Stings NCIS Could Be Conned Into Doing As A Result Of Gibbs' Neurotic Need To Be Constantly Working — by the time Abby cleared her throat and said, "And then, tragically, as a result of Tony being bullied into trading his ass in the underground porno industry, he's turned off from women forever and the entire heterosexual female contingent of North America comes after you with golf clubs and tennis rackets and baseball bats — "

"I get it, Abby," Gibbs said, and then, because he recognized that which he couldn't change and the fact that there was literally nothing to do, he went back to his house and sanded at the futtock of the ship until he heard Letterman come on.

Day two of Gibbs' awareness DiNozzo was on loan, day four of DiNozzo being on loan, day six of nothing going on, Gibbs spent half the morning Google searching himself until he found some website called Vault.Com and a screed about his employee management that all but screamed "DiNozzo in a snit." At four, there was a fire alarm. At eight thirty that night, watching something called "The Gilmore Girls" while he nicked himself six times trying to carve a mermaid for the ship, Gibbs recognized this might be construed as pathetic behavior for a man not considerably older than 37.

On day seven, DiNozzo was in the office when Gibbs stomped in with two extra large coffees from the Cosi on the corner and he viciously quashed an upwelling of something that might or might not have been affection when DiNozzo bounced out of his seat and chirped, "Morning, boss — miss me?"

"No," Gibbs said honestly. He hadn't. Prying the lid off of one of his coffees, he asked, "What were you up to with the boys in blue?"

"Consulting," DiNozzo said proudly, and got cut off from saying anything else when Abby hit him with a sidetackle hug, which was about when Kate strolled in eating a bran muffin and managed to smile through her health consciousness long enough to look a shade too fond for what she claimed were her true feelings toward DiNozzo. Gibbs had always suspected they were better friends than they let on; it could be a liability — they'd plotted to burn his boat, and between Kate's savvy and DiNozzo's hutzpah, they might actually singe the damn thing.

"What kind of case was it?" McGee asked, still half-buried in old files and sounding desperate.

"Yeah, Tony, tell us about the case," Abby cheered. "Was it cool to be back pounding the pavement?"

"It wasn't pavement they were pounding, Abs," DiNozzo said smirking. "Illegal porn distro — ex-Marine was the chief suspect and — Abs? Abby? Okay, it wasn't that funny."

"Oh, Tony," Abby gasped, leaning heavily on him and heaving for breath, "you have no idea."

Gibbs hid behind his monitor, stubbornly keeping his eyes glued to his login. He couldn't believe nobody in the whole entire navy had managed to do anything to get him out of his God forsaken office.


End file.
